


Woundwort

by Seebright



Category: Hyper Light Drifter
Genre: Contemplation Of Those Little Things, Contrast, Death, Flower Symbolism, Gen, Have You Ever Found An Old Bone Outside?, Hopeful, Is It Symbolism? Yeah., Life - Freeform, Maybe I Don't Know How Flowers Work, NPK amiright, Nonbinary Pronouns, Not A Lot Else, Not The Pronouns Those Are Unrelated, Okay Just To Be Careful, Surprisingly, The Drifter Doesn't Die, There IS Dying And Blood IS Mentioned, They're Actually Having A Pretty Good Time, They/Them To Be Specific, Vague, Vague Descriptions Of War And Dying, WHY Can't I Keep All My Capital Letters On My Tags, Which I Very Carefully Wrote Out, but everything else, nonbinary characters - Freeform, yeah - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-10
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:53:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22655809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seebright/pseuds/Seebright
Summary: Often life can be very cruel.But still there are wonderful things.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 20





	Woundwort

**Author's Note:**

> Did you know what another one of the common daisy's titles is 'woundwort,' even if it's more usually paired with that different plant? Did you know it's also sometimes called 'bone flower'? They're stubborn little things.
> 
> This is short, but here it is! I guess I'll share. I stayed a long time in the West area, and thought a little too hard about it, maybe.

A long time ago, a soldier cried in the dark.

Or, they only wished, fervently and with all the trembling fear caught up in their throat and tangling in their thoughts, that it would be dark. Their eyes were closed and their breath came fast, and around them came screams and the hiss and heat of gunfire, shots of light that burned pink like death even past their tightly shut eyes. 

The soldier clutched at their uniform, simple, rough fabric soaked through already with blood, all of it their own, and pressed their back to the unforgiving broad plane of a towering crystal, one of the last still unshattered for miles. Voices called around them, harsh and clear, and their words filtered through enough that the soldier realized with terrible fear that they were preparing, and that they were called to help.

They couldn’t let their last breaths be spent in hatred. The soldier couldn’t allow the others to look upon their corpse with disgust. They found their feet and were swept away, loading cells into something with a wide barrel, something that was at once larger than they’d expected and smaller than they’d hoped.

What could this do? The question was all they could think, strung not with wonder but with the despair that dripped from their face.

They loaded it anyway with hands that shook and bled and watched the rounds click into place with eyes that blurred and then it was upon them. 

It rose through fire and ruined earth like the mountains it had torn, like it would take the place of the world it destroyed, black as the smoke that wreathed and rose with a peculiar slowness from its form in a way that reminded the soldier distantly of those impossibly huge clouds far above on clear days, drifting and meeting and thinning at such a sedate, unhurried pace that they couldn’t be on a scale the soldier could comprehend, to be untouched save in the broadest sense by such things as wind or the little hurries of life.

But this thing was not as untouchable as a cloud. And its eyes, bright like torches in its blackened face, illuminating now a maw that opened with fangs so eerily similar to a person’s, were set upon the soldier.

How immense was the thing, not creature or machine but the worst, most enduring machinations of the minds of both, and yet it saw them. And it hated them.

It brought its face low and the soldier could see that its eyes weren’t eyes at all, only pits in its face where fire or light or the burn of malice spilled out over its bonelike cheeks and swept away all the dark the soldier so desperately wished would stay.

It opened its mouth, and the crystalgun fired. And then it backfired, exploding from too much ammunition, a last-ditch effort to increase its concentration to the levels needed to kill a colossus. 

And the soldier died with their back to cold, unforgiving crystal anyway as the fires burned around them.

Many years later, a drifter passed through. Their eyes were dark and clear and their skin, what little was bare to the warm sunlight filtering down through the red leaves above, was a blue flushed with the almost-uncomfortable heat of the day. 

They picked their way between shards of broken crystal and ancient bone, past a machine that lay in countless rusted pieces strewn a dozen paces in any direction, searching the ground with keen eyes. The whisper of their cloaks over the grass grown tall and deep, cool at its roots and still in the process of losing morning dew to the slow breeze, was the only sound they made. 

It was a beautiful day, and the drifter was determined to use it for something worthwhile. 

They stepped carefully over a skull on the ground, still loosely associated with a rotted set of clothes mostly draped over the rest of the body, lying partially within crystal. Within and around the dried bones, through the sparse ribcage peeking out pale and crumbling from where the deep blue grass had grown up around it, were clusters and bunches of tiny white flowers, lovely and white like snowflakes and with petals soft that drifted in what wind filtered through the grass’ blades, turning their pretty little faces to the distant clouds above.

The flowers were perfect, the drifter decided, but something stopped them from plucking a few for their growing bouquet, clutched too tightly in one clawed hand. 

They felt like they were spoken for, somehow. The drifter did not often take notice of the countless corpses that what remained of the world was built upon, fallen so long ago now that they were half of the earth themselves, long since food for the flowers and the trees now-tall and sighing hushed, gentle sighs to the sky. But now the drifter did take notice, crouching besides the skull to run a careful claw amongst its little crop of daisies, brushing over the petals appreciatively. 

The bone must be good for them. The most beautiful flowers often grew where bones fell, like gratitude or an apology. And just as well, the drifter thought, for no one remembered them well enough to properly bury them, let alone bring them flowers.

The drifter cocked their head at the skull, at its empty eyes filled now with growing things, and listened to the birds whistle and sing merrily to each over overhead and to the wind pick up some and rustle their cloak. They tilted their face to the breeze playing cool over their skin and breathed it in, sweet even past the cowl covering their nose. 

Then they looked with consideration at the fistful of flowers they’d already collected, bold and brightly colored and small and twining like bells, and plucked free one whose petals were broad and sky-blue deepening to black at the very center, where the yellow stamen contrasted cheerfully and bobbed as the drifter tugged it away from the rest.

They set it down and tucked it under a group of the tiny white flowers, forming something that looked, to their fanciful and somewhat generous imagining, like a bright white cloud on a summer sky.

The drifter stood up and regarded it for a moment with satisfaction, glanced around to see if anyone had seen, though they knew they were miles from another, and strode away near-soundlessly to search out a new flower to replace the one they’d given, and a few more besides. What was a bouquet to gift, if there wasn’t balance?

Not once did they look up and see the shattered face of the colossus, draped also in ivies and blooms and only as like a face as a statue worn and weathered and unrecognizable might be, and they mightn’t’ve cared if they had.

The clouds drifted overhead, untouched.


End file.
